


turquoise, topaz, tiger's eye

by HereComeDatBoi



Series: close your eyes, fall in love (and stay) [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adashi Month 2019, Age Difference, Also there's a baby, Altean Adam (Voltron), Alternate Universe - Royalty, Childhood Memories, Don't Like Don't Read, Galra Shiro (Voltron), Galtean AU, Husbands, I mean it guys, Love at First Sight, M/M, Married Adam/Shiro (Voltron), no seriously this is a huge age difference, they are in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 13:00:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19992619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereComeDatBoi/pseuds/HereComeDatBoi
Summary: The memory always seemed to shift there, somehow, and try as he might Shiro could never tell why―but he remembered the bloodthirsty strikes Myzax had taken, the deftness with which the Altean evaded every lunge and parry and landed three hits for each one Myzax attempted―the way Kolivan forgot his dignity and cheered the Altean with the rest, raising his fists in the air and shouting like a child playing chase in the summer―“See how he moves, Takashi!” he had roared, as the young man blocked a blow to the face almost a second too late. “See how light he is on his feet, how his shoulders follow the saber! Now Myzax advances again, and―”Long ago, Shiro resigned himself to the fact that he would never meet the knight in silver again.It isn't until after his wedding that he realizes his first love might be closer at hand than he thinks.





	turquoise, topaz, tiger's eye

Shiro’s early years were something of a blur, before Keith was born. He remembered his parents’ wedding in the winter of his seventh year, the announcement of a coming heir to the throne when he was nearly ten, the day Acxa kidnapped him from his nursery and pretended he was her brother until someone finally realized he was missing―but not much else, save for a handful of disconnected images and voices that came and went before vanishing entirely.

And then there was his earliest memory, which came back to him now and again in his dreams like a half-forgotten lullaby. 

He had been just shy of his fourth birthday at the time, three feet tall and still covered in fine purple down when he woke from a nap to find himself on Kolivan’s shoulder, peering over the heads of Galra and Helithians and several children of a species that looked like a cross between Arusians and Olkari. His mother was standing a few paces away, wrapped in a deep red mantle made of Earthen spider silk; it was a courting gift from the ambassador the humans had chosen to send to Daibazaal as her bridegroom, a soft-spoken man called Jacob who talked with a strange sweet twang in his voice and always brought Shiro chocolate when he visited. Zethrid had told him in confidence that Jacob would probably be his new father some day, but the infant Shiro did not mind the thought in the slightest―even he could tell that his mother was lonely, and though she was always distant and _proper_ with the Earthen man it was plain that he made her happy. 

“Where’m I?” he yawned, rubbing his fists into his eyes and trying to hide his face in the hood of Kolivan’s robes. “Uncle Kolivan, where’s my bed?”

“You’re not in it,” said the general, amused. “Don’t you remember? We’re at the Helithian arena for the tournament.”

“Oh!” Shiro cried, sitting straight up and knocking Kolivan’s cloak to the floor. “Did I miss it? Is it all done?”

“No, not quite,” laughed his mother. “But the reigning champion’s up next, and he’s facing a newcomer, so we thought you might want to see.”

“Who is the champion?”

“You ought to know that, dearheart,” the princess chided, pointing to the fearsome Galra scowling down from the nearest holoscreen. “Myzax, from the Eastlands. Your cousin Lotor’s kingdom.”

“He looks scary.” Shiro scowled at him. “And mean. And I don’t like him.”

“He was brutal when he landed his third strike on Antok. No sense of sportsmanship at all,” muttered Kolivan. “You are not his lord, Takashi, so you can shout for his opponent if you like. It would be poor form since you are Galra yourself, but then again you are only three years old.”

“I’m almost four fingers now,” said Shiro proudly, holding the aforementioned number of small purple digits against Kolivan’s face. “Is it still poor form? Because I still don’t like him.”

“No, it isn’t―Krolia! Don’t tell me _that’s_ the boy that took Ulaz down in the primaries?”

Someone else’s picture had come and gone on the holoscreen, but Shiro had not seen it. “Who, Mama?”

“Myzax’s opponent, loveling,” Krolia answered, pulling her datapad out of Kolivan’s shoulder bag and running through the list of champions. “He was an Altean, wasn’t he? Brown hair, blue eyes and marks, some kind of contraption on his nose for nearsightedness?”

“He wasn’t wearing them just now,” said Kolivan distractedly. “Goddess, I wish I hadn’t missed Ulaz’s match if―”

But Shiro never heard why Ulaz’s match was so important, because Kolivan was drowned out seconds later by a thunderstorm of applause as the Eastland champion strode into the ring from the northern side of the complex. He stood there alone for a moment before another figure marched in from the other end, clad in blue and silver armor that flashed in the light like a suit made of polished mirrors. The second champion was less than two-thirds of Myzax’s height, and as Shiro stared over his mother’s head it seemed that three or four men his size could have stood shoulder to shoulder and still been utterly hidden behind his opponent’s girth. 

“He’s tiny,” he remarked at last, squinting at the Altean with suspicious grey eyes and putting his sugary hands down Kolivan’s collar. “He’s going to get squashed.”

“Watch him before you pass judgments, _il’yashe,_ ” his mother reminded him. “He’s already beaten Ulaz and your Uncle Thace, and you know how long they’ve been competing.”

“Opponents shake hands,” came the announcer’s voice from the top of the stands, warped and slowed a little by the universal translator on the arena’s sound system. Shiro never liked listening to translated speech, especially since it always ended up sounding like Highland Galran to him. He preferred the quadrant’s common speech despite his better knowledge of the Highland tongue, because his mother always spoke in common; it was sweeter and less harsh to human ears, and since his late father had been part-human none of the native Galran languages had ever fit Shiro at all―

“Focus, little one,” rumbled Kolivan. Shiro jumped and looked guiltily back at the ring, where Myzax and the young Altean had shaken hands and retreated to the starting points marked on the floor in green paint. 

The memory always seemed to shift there, somehow, and try as he might Shiro could never tell why―but he remembered the bloodthirsty strikes Myzax had taken, the deftness with which the Altean evaded every lunge and parry and landed three hits for each one Myzax attempted―the way Kolivan forgot his dignity and cheered the Altean with the rest, raising his fists in the air and shouting like a child playing chase in the summer―

“See how he moves, Takashi!” he had roared, as the young man blocked a blow to the face almost a second too late. “See how light he is on his feet, how his shoulders follow the saber! Now Myzax advances again, and―” 

A deafening cry filled the stadium, and it was then that Shiro had his first glimpse of the champion’s face―dark and high-boned with russet eyes like coals in a bed of ashes, and flecked with blood from the gash running down from the corner of his mouth to his chin. As Shiro watched the cut seemed to shimmer, and then to shrink―and an instant later it disappeared completely, provoking another burst of applause from the crowd as he turned away and slipped right under Myzax’s legs to dodge the path of his cleaver. 

“He’s beautiful,” whispered Shiro, thinking of the white knight in his book of fairy stories, who fought the wicked prince of the Shades and vanquished him with the sacred flame he bore in the pommel of his sword. “Like the pretty Moon Prince in the storybooks.”

“What’s that?” said his mother vaguely. “Prince what?”

“Nothing, Mama.”

And then the shrieks from the wings grew so loud that Kolivan clapped his hands over Shiro’s small ears, for the Altean youth had done the unthinkable―dethroned the reigning ten-year champion and claimed the match for himself, offering Myzax a hand up out of the dust before bowing and walking away to the judges’ stand with the light in his noble face shining more fiercely than ever. 

* * *

“I’m going to fight like him someday.”

“Yes, Takashi. I heard you when you said it the first time, sweetheart.”

“I’ll meet him in the tournament, and maybe he’ll beat me too―I’m so little and Myzax was _dreadful_ big, so I guess I won’t win either, but I want to fight with him just once, Mama!”

“Eat your _haanan,_ little warrior. You have to grow big and strong if you ever want to spar against the prince of Altea.”

Shiro shoveled the greens into his mouth and followed them with a gulp of water before climbing up into his mother’s lap and tugging at the neck of her gown. “Do you think I’ll ever get to? Really?”

“You’ll just have to grow as fast as you can, _il’yashe,_ and see if it happens one day.”

And grow he did, surpassing both his mother and father in height by the year he turned thirteen and never quite forgetting the sight of bright blue armor shining through a veil of darkness―but _someday_ never came, and when Shiro entered the tournament at twenty-one he found that the young Altean had not been seen off his own planet for years.

“Held down the title like a madman, he did,” sighed the Olkari girl who took Shiro’s seal on the first day of the competition. “No one got so much as a look at the champions’ crown while he was here, I remember. It’s a pity he’s gone, but I’m sure you’ll meet him again eventually. He has a younger brother who hasn’t come of age yet, so he’ll come to watch him fight sometime or other.”

But the soldier in blue and silver never returned, and by the time Shiro journeyed to Altea for Keith’s betrothal nine years later he was half convinced his beautiful knight had been nothing more than a dream. 

* * *

_“Hushabye, hushabye,_

_My good baby, sleep._

_Where did my treasure’s nursemaid go?_

_Beyond the mountain, back to her home._

_And what did she bring from the mountain for you?_

_A drum and a flute, for my baby’s joy.”_

Shiro turned over and wrapped his arms around his pillow, feeling something small and soft shift beside him before poking the small of his back. The something had tiny downy hands and blunt little claws like an _orqil_ ’s, and as he lay there he felt them scratching the tender skin at his neck before someone whisked them away. 

“No, _il’yashe,_ ” he heard, followed by a happy little coo from his daughter and a hum of laughter from his husband. “I’ll have to trim your claws in the morning. Be happy with your lullaby and let your Papa sleep, he’s hardly rested for days.”

“Adam?” Shiro mumbled, lifting his head from the bolster and pulling his husband to his chest. “What’s she doing?”

“She thinks it’s time for you to get up,” smiled Adam, running a gentle hand through Shiro’s hair. “I thought Father was exaggerating when he said Altean babies went through a nocturnal period, but Asha seems to be proving him right.”

“Galra infants are completely nocturnal,” Shiro yawned, breathing in the scent of Adam’s juniberry bath salts and the soap they used to wash Asha’s hair. “Their eyes are too delicate for sun until the end of the first year. Remember when she used to cry if anyone opened the curtains?”

“ _That’s_ what that was? But your eyes are almost human.”

“I can’t see the full range of colors most Galra do,” he said sleepily. “Asha can tell the difference between her blue yelmor and the one Keith says is her _ealith_ one, so I’m guessing she takes after my mother.”

“Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever stop finding out new things about her,” whispered Adam, nuzzling the tiny puff of brown hair on Asha’s little head. “I thought she’d be just half of me and half of you, but she’s so much more than either of us―like a miracle all of her own.”

“She’s got the best of you, sweetheart.” Shiro kissed the curve of his cheek and then the baby’s nose, feeling his heart clench as she scrunched up her small round face and sneezed. “And the best of me, too.”

“We don’t know which of us she’s going to be like when she’s older,” Adam reasoned. “But―”

“Oh, she’s going to take after you,” he smiled. “I can tell. She’s nothing like me except for the fur. But you’re the best of me, _ae-in,_ so if she’s the best of you...well, you know what I mean.”

“I wonder sometimes which one of us married a prince,” sighed his husband, flaming scarlet as Shiro pressed forward and kissed the dimple over his mouth. “Shouldn’t I be the one charming you, love?”

“Technically, both of us married princes,” Shiro pointed out. “I wasn’t one by law when we met, but still the son of a queen.”

“Perhaps, but as prince of Altea I had longer training in such matters.”

Shiro opened his mouth to reply and then leaned back, half-certain those words meant something more to him than Adam had intended them to. He had not often heard them before; Adam almost always mentioned which half of the planet his father had ruled when he spoke of his title, just as Shiro himself was the crown prince of _Highland_ Daibazaal and not Daibazaal as a whole. But someone else had called Adam the prince of Altea long ago, and Shiro realized that in Adam’s case it made sense in a way. The southern half of Altea was split into four densely populated quarters, and each of those was governed like Jacob’s home country―like a republic, though Shiro had never bothered to find out what exactly a republic was. 

“You’re Altea’s only prince,” he realized, thinking of exactly _who_ had said that phrase long ago. “Even if King Alfor didn’t rule the whole planet.”

“The first one, yes, but Lance―”

“Was a child then, and will be until his seventy-fifth birthday. And you were heir to the throne beside Allura before you married me.”

“What do you mean?” asked Adam, reaching up and trying to smooth out the wrinkles in Shiro’s forehead. “Takashi, you’re not making any sense.”

_You have to grow big and strong, if you ever want to spar against the prince of―_

“There’s a dream I keep having,” said Shiro at last. “I―well, I _think_ it’s a memory, since I know at least part of it happened. I keep seeing myself at a tournament, one of the ones they used to host on Helith, with Kolivan holding me up so I could look over the crowd.”

“But wouldn’t you have gone to plenty of those? To support the Highland champions at least, even if you weren’t competing?”

“No, not really. Antok, Thace and Ulaz only managed to reach the semifinals once and Kolivan never wanted anything to do with Lotor’s champions, so I never went to the tourneys until the two I managed to enter myself.”

“So how could that be a memory, then?”

“It was a few matches after Antok’s last one, I think.” Shiro frowned. “His opponent was fighting again, the ten-year champion. Myzax, I think his name was, though he hasn’t competed in longer than I can remember.”

“I think I defeated a Myzax at my first tournament,” yawned Adam, pulling the corner of his pillowcase out of Asha’s mouth. “But I don’t recall exactly. Your cousin sent eleven champions that year, and I fought five or six of them.”

_See how he moves, Takashi! See how light he his on his feet, how his shoulders follow the saber! Now Myzax advances again, and―_

“It was you.”

Adam blinked at him. 

“What?”

“The champion who gave Lotor’s crown jewel his first defeat in a decade,” breathed Shiro, reaching out and laying a hand on Adam’s cheek. “The one who took home the luxite diadem that year and kept it for the next fifteen tourneys. It was you.”

There was a gale of laughter then, warm and sweet and bright like the sound of a hundred temple bells. “Didn’t you know that? I don’t think Antok would have allowed me to marry into his cousin’s family if I hadn’t been this quadrant’s best warrior, love.”

“No― _Adam,_ ” he choked. “You―you don’t understand, I _remember―Adam,_ I was _there!_ I watched, and I saw you, and I thought―I thought of you night and day when I was on the training field, I―I was desperate to find you and face you just once, never mind that I didn’t even know for certain that you existed―”

“You can’t have been, love. You would have been only a baby then, surely.”

“Galra,” Shiro reminded him feebly. “We walk by the second year and talk well enough by the third. I was almost four, then.”

“Oh.”

Adam was silent for a while, and then―

“Do you―mind it?”

“Mind what, darling?”

“That your champion was me, I suppose.”

“Why would I mind? Sweetheart, you―I would never have had a thing of my own, if I hadn’t seen you that day.” He ran a reverent finger down Adam’s nose, trying to silence the thundering of his heart as Asha’s small fist closed around a lock of his hair. “Not my place in the army, not the princeship since I was illegitimate, not―not _you,_ not _Asha―nothing_. I would have been your brother-in-law, with no place of honor save as my mother’s ward, and Keith would have been governing a kingdom too lost in its blood-purist ways to give him half the respect he commanded. You changed the course of my life without even knowing it, and his, and―”

“And mine, too,” smiled Adam. “You’ve forgotten that.”

He laid Shiro’s hands over his heart and pressed their foreheads together, and in that moment Shiro realized why he had not recognized Adam when they first met on Altea―and then, how sorely necessary the change in his appearance had been.

“I only saw your eyes, that day,” he murmured. “You must have let your shifting drop for a minute after you won the match, because when I saw them they were brown and gold like _easal_ in a jar. Your marks were covered, so I didn’t see those, but your eyes were just like they are now.”

“And will be, always, for as long as I have,” whispered his husband. “Because of you, my Takashi.”

“You realize what this means, then?”

“Hm?”

“It means I’ve loved you all my life,” said Shiro simply, watching as Adam blushed again like the Highland sky at dawn. “You have my present, and my future, and now you have my past, too.”

“Well, if you put it that way,” Adam huffed. “I wish I had something more to give you.”

Shiro looked down at the small purple bundle lying between them and then into Adam’s face, lifting his chin and kissing him until they both ran out of breath. 

“ _Il’yashe,_ ” he croaked, pulling him closer and shutting his eyes at the sound of Adam’s heartbeat. “Love, you’ve blessed me with the most precious gifts that ever were. Every day I wake up with you beside me, with Asha, I―there is no sweeter Heaven to me than the place where you set your feet, and I’ll spend the rest of my days making certain you never have cause to forget it, I promise.”

  
  



End file.
